The Chinese release of Zhang Yimou‘s WWII film The Flowers of War is imminent in China, where the film will open on December 16. But its fate has been undecided in the States.

Now Wrekin Hill Entertainment, in association with Row 1 Productions, will release the movie in a limited late December Academy qualifying run, and give the movie a wider release in early 2012.

In The Flowers of War, which is set in 1937, Christian Bale plays “a salty mortician who apparently has come to town to bury the priest of a cathedral in Nanking,” and ends up taking over for the priest when invading Japanese forces threaten the students of a girls’ school that is also housed in the cathedral. We saw a Chinese sales trailer not long ago, but with distribution set for the movie we can probably expect a trailer for US audiences in short order.